Five Ideas: Mobile

Oracle at Mobile World Congress 2012

February 2012

In February, Oracle was at Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona, Spain. There, Oracle hosted workshops on a variety of topics about the mobile industry, including how to capture the benefits of the cloud and how the latest systems, servers and storage capabilities can drive business performance. Also, the company made announcements, including releasing the results of a performance test demonstrating that Oracle Communications Converged Application Server running on Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud, and using the Oracle Linux operating system, can deliver exceptional performance for communications service providers. Read more about the test results, plus hear what experts have to say about how mobile is changing the way we do business.

“One of the hot themes at this year's [Mobile World Conference] will be around mobile payments. Many view this as the next big thing in mobile. Many of the operators, particularly here in North America, have banded together around certain standards, Google's taking a very different approach. It will be very interesting to hear what I expect to be a very heated dialogue about these different approaches. I think that some of the operators like Vodaphone and Safaricom who've had a lot of experience in this domain can also really help clear the way for other operators in figuring out how to make money from this business.” —Dan Ford, vice president of Product Marketing, Oracle Communications

“If you look at statistics, you see that purchasing intent is really high — almost unnaturally high — with mobile. It’s 12 percent versus two or three percent online. The problem is that high purchase intent is only present for a nanosecond. Requiring seven clicks is way too many and you have abandoned shopping carts dotted right across the ecosystem. With mobile, two clicks is one click too many.” —Gary Schwartz, author of The Impulse Economy: Understanding Mobile Shoppers and What Makes Them Buy

“We can offer relevant products and services based on each client’s individual needs and purchase history. The service-oriented architecture was designed so we could bring in extra insight, enabling our sales team to offer targeted services based on our knowledge of each individual and the behavior patterns of similar customers in similar circumstances. For example, it helps us identify customers who are likely to adopt new equipment or upgrade their service plans. Having current information helps our call center reps know exactly what customers want.” —Eduardo Barnetche, CRM director at Claro

“More than half of consumers regularly use two or more retail channels to shop, browsing and researching products online, using their mobile phone to check prices, or visiting a store simply to touch and feel a product before they buy. This is a game-changer for retailers, requiring them to integrate channels both operationally and from the customer’s point of view. Among the top priorities are the ability to exchange and use, throughout the business and across all channels, the same information about customers, merchandise, pricing and promotions. Customers demand it. To a great extent, say consumers today, the cross-channel experience begins with price and availability.” —From Oracle Report Cross-Channel Commerce 2011: The Consumer View (pdf)